


kiss me hard before you go

by GraceNM



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: And More Angst, Angst, Episode: s01e12 Prophecy Girl, F/M, Missing Scene, POV Alternating, Post-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-16 20:36:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16502279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraceNM/pseuds/GraceNM
Summary: Angel and Buffy struggle to move forward after the events of Prophecy Girl. Post-Season 1/pre-Season 2.





	1. Angel

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by my Bangel bestie [Mrs Gordo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsGordo)!

All he wanted to do was help her.

Maybe hanging out at a club wasn’t exactly the kind of dangerous activity Angel had imagined watching over when he followed after Buffy to Los Angeles, but he still couldn’t tear his eyes away.

She didn’t seem to know these people well. He wasn’t sure if they were old friends who had grown apart, or new acquaintances. He told himself that it didn’t matter. He should just wait outside, make sure she got home safely. He shouldn’t be spying on her from across the room.

He could tell she wasn’t as happy as she was pretending to be, twirling her golden hair and standing much closer than he’d like to the teenage boys who flirted with her. He couldn’t help but wonder if her acting was for his benefit — an attempt to reassure or even provoke. He hadn’t revealed his presence to her at all yet, and after the first few times, she’d stopped doing the thing where her face crinkled in confusion and she looked around for...well, him. But that didn’t mean she didn’t know he was there.

He hated feeling like this, less a protector keeping watch than a predator stalking. But then, he'd never been anyone's guardian angel. And he couldn’t pretend he was hers. The misery of it all was that he wanted too much, he cared too much, for that. He couldn’t even save her from himself.

Then someone new joined her little group and her face lit up with genuine emotion. Angel realized he recognized the guy a little. One of the kids from Hemery. He and Buffy began talking animatedly, their heads close together, as if they didn’t want anyone to overhear. Someone else handed Buffy a drink and she took it.

Angel’s eyes narrowed and his feet started moving.

But by the time he pushed through the crush of people to where she had been standing, she was gone.

†††

When he finally found her, Buffy was in the alley outside the club, clinging to the arm of the dark-haired boy from before. Angel was worried about what had been in that drink.

He stepped out into the streetlight. "What are you doing?" he asked the boy menacingly.

"Angel," Buffy breathed.

"Just getting her home, man," the boy said. "Chill."

Buffy just looked at him. A little spark of surprise had brightened her face for a moment but it quickly faded. She looked pissed.

"I didn't know you were here with someone," the guy said to Buffy.

"Neither did I," she said, never breaking eye contact with Angel. "C’mon, let’s go."

And they walked past him and away. She didn't look back.

†††

The next night she was huddled on one of the deck chairs outside her dad's condo. It was warm but she was wearing a hooded sweatshirt over her shirt and shorts. He smelled salt coming from the opposite direction as the sea, and he discovered he couldn't handle just waiting there in the dark while she cried. Not anymore.

He climbed onto the deck.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, clearly trying to hide the sniffle in her voice. She stood up from her chair to face him.

"I wanted to make sure you were OK. I was worried about you last night, Buffy."

"Oh, c'mon," she said dismissively. "You were just mad that I was with Pike. It's not like you actually ca—"

And then he was kissing her. A raw, needy kiss that fueled the ache in his chest. Her hands came up to touch his face, his hair, and he responded hungrily, sliding his fingers just under the hem of her shirt to caress her soft skin. She sighed into him and he thrilled at the sound of her racing pulse. Suddenly, he wanted her to know just how much she affected him, too, and he clutched her to him, his hardness pressing against her. Holding her like this, kissing her like this, felt so damn good that he was immediately ashamed of himself.

He was supposed to be keeping her safe, not acting like a hormone-driven teenager. He pulled away sharply.

"Angel?" she said. Her kiss-wet lips shimmered in the moonlight. Her eyes were wide and dark, her clothes slightly askew. She looked like a living dream made just for him and it took every ounce of willpower not to scoop her up in his arms and carry her away to some place where they could be together, just the two of them, forever.

Instead, he turned and fled. He didn't stop his journey through the night until he was safe in the abandoned building he was staying in, cuddled up with only his familiar self-loathing.

†††

He stayed away as long as he could. But then he sought her out again, unable to bear it. He found her standing on the beach, looking out over the lapping waves.

He wanted nothing more than to slide his arms around her, let her relax into him, to shelter her from the wind. He settled for standing next to her.

“Hi,” she said. It was clipped but it was still a greeting. He wasn’t unwelcome.

“Buffy, about the other night—“

“Bygones,” she said, cutting him off. “We agreed that we couldn’t...”

They had. That night at the Bronze after she’d found out the truth about him. The night she’d marked him as hers for good, though she didn’t know it.

He had tried to keep his distance after that, but then she... _then she died_ , he forced himself to finish. Then she defied prophecy and flipped his world upside down for the second time. Or the third. He couldn’t keep track. No wonder he could hardly keep his balance around her.

But her death had cracked a hole in his resolve, and it scared him, because it kept getting bigger. He still knew they could never... and yet sometimes, like tonight, he could convince himself that staying away was the wrong choice. The only certain thing was that she would die again someday. And shouldn’t she have whatever she wanted?

 _But she shouldn’t want you_ , he reminded himself, starting the circle of mental torment over again. _She deserves something better._

“I’m thinking about going back to Sunnydale,” he said. “There’s been talk about some new vampire activity. I can keep an eye on things till you get back.”

She nodded. “Are you sure I shouldn’t...?”

“Yeah,” he assured her. “Just minor stuff I can handle.”

“OK,” she said. “That’s probably...better.”

He felt a stab of pain. How many times was he going to have to leave her, to lose her?

“I’m sorry I can’t...”

“Stay with me?” she finished, hugging her arms around her.

He couldn’t get a word out, but he hoped his eyes could speak. Then he remembered he wasn’t supposed to be showing her those kinds of secrets. He looked down at his feet until the pressure in his chest eased slightly. “It’ll be better,” he echoed. “Just...take care of yourself, OK?”

She nodded briefly, then looked back out over the waves. “I guess I’ll see you in the fall.”

He went right to the station and took the midnight bus back to Sunnydale before he could change his mind. Waiting the long weeks for her to return from L.A., with no way of knowing she was safe, was going to kill him. 

He thought it was probably exactly what he deserved.


	2. Buffy

It just wouldn’t be home without the prickly sensation of someone watching her.

She’d forgotten about this while in Sunnydale. There, when her spine tingled and her stomach flipped, Angel would inevitably materialize out of nowhere. But she hadn’t seen him since the night of the spring fling. The night she...

But farther back, before she left L.A., she used to get this feeling sometimes. It would stop her in her tracks in the cemetery, on the street, but all she ever saw were shadows.

She hated it, but she couldn’t deny that it made her work harder, kept her on her guard, and more than once that had made the difference. Now there was something nostalgic about it. She almost craved it, the idea that someone was looking out for her. If she convinced herself it was him, was that really so bad?

And while he watched, while they all watched, she would work harder, stay on her guard, try to be a girl instead of whatever she was. She would smile too bright and laugh too loud and pretend that the jagged bits inside her didn’t hurt, didn’t still rip her open when none of them could see.

“So, it’s been six months. Is your new school still standing?” a male voice asked teasingly and this time when she smiled, it was almost real.

Even Pike didn’t look at her like a normal girl, but he did still look at her like a hero. He didn’t know she’d been broken. He’d never kissed her like Angel did after the dance, like if he wasn’t careful she would crumble into dust.

It probably was Angel in the shadows, she thought again, but this time it was laced with bitterness. He probably thought she couldn’t take care of herself. Well, the joke was on him, because she was sure as hell she was the only one who could.

When someone handed her a drink, she gulped it.

It was just water, but she choked on it anyway. She tried not to think about the way it burned her lungs.

†††

“Who was that guy?” Pike asked as they walked toward the beat-up old car he clearly kept running through sheer power of will.

“Nobody,” she answered, squeezing his arm more tightly. She debated kissing him, pulling him down to her under the streetlight and letting Angel get an eyeful.

Would serve him right, the vampire who somehow thought he could save her, preserve her innocence. Didn’t he know it was already too late? 

He hadn’t even had the decency to inform her of some lame impending doom.

The car didn’t have air conditioning, so they left the windows down, the hot air feeling heavy against her skin as they drove past the dark corners and dizzying lights of this place she still thought of as home.

Pike walked her all the way inside, stopping just beyond her dad’s front door. He tilted her chin up with one gentle knuckle, made her look at him. “You OK, Buffy?” he asked.

For one wobbly second, she wanted to tell.

“I’m great,” she said with her too-bright smile.

†††

She slept in late the next day, watched soap operas in the living room and tried to figure out what had happened to Marlena and Erica and Laura in the many months it had been since she cared about this stuff.

She thought about calling Willow, but Willow would just be concerned, and the last thing she wanted was anyone else thinking she was weak.

Maybe she was being too hard on all of them, but they couldn’t understand. Even she couldn’t understand. She was so mad at Angel and yet the thing she wanted most in the world was for him to reappear.

Her dad brought home her favorite tacos and they ate standing up at the kitchen island, smearing sour cream and guacamole and dropping little bits of cheese and tomato. He tried to make her laugh with a story about something to do with accounting but she could hardly muster a smile. It wasn’t long before she fled out to the deck.

This was one of the benefits of her dad leaving behind their house in the Valley with all its memories and trading up for a swingin' bachelor pad (*eyeroll*) in Santa Monica. It was oceanfront, of course. Pretty plush, actually, especially the private deck with its killer view of the sunset. He was even thinking about putting in a hot tub.

She wondered for the billionth time what her summer would be like if she didn’t have destiny pulling down on her like gravity. If Angel was just the college student she had passed him off as to her mom. A guy she met at the Bronze who would come to visit her whenever he could get time off from his summer job at some restaurant — he'd make great tips, looking like he did. A life where getting in trouble would mean going too far in the hot tub, or getting caught coming in late by her dad. Not ending up with two holes in her neck, facedown in a pool of brackish water.

She wasn't supposed to think about this. But it was too late and hot tears stung her eyes.

So of course that was exactly when he showed up.

Her eyes dried fast as her anger flared. She was mad at him for seeing her like this. For being everything she wanted and still not enough, because he wasn’t hers.

So she lashed out, going for the thing that would hurt most, accusing him of not caring. And his eyes narrowed and she thought he was going to stalk away, but instead he kissed her.

And, oh god, he'd hadn't kissed her like this, hard and hungry, since that first time in her bedroom, when he'd vamped out and made her scream. 

The thought of Angel’s desire overcoming his careful control sent fear and excitement shimmering down her spine. His fingers grazed her skin and she slid a hand into his hair, holding him firmly against her, feeling wild and a little desperate for more. And then he was pulling her body tight to his and she could feel him, really feel him, and, wow, that was good. That was incredibly good. To know she could make him feel this way.

She thought if he would just keep kissing her, maybe she could forget about all the bad stuff that had ever happened to her. He could just drive all the thoughts from her head and all the terror from its home in her chest.

But she knew he wouldn’t keep kissing her. Knew it even before he pulled away, shocked, like her body had suddenly become a live wire.

She didn’t expect to get what she wanted anymore.

†††

She wasn’t going to pine for him, she decided, after he left her alone on the beach.

She wasn’t going to smile too brightly, either. She needed thicker armor than that.

The next morning, she went to her dad’s gym and worked her body for hours, until her muscles burned, until she could almost forget the way Angel felt pressed against her.

The only person who could take care of her was her. She couldn’t rely on her parents or Giles or a vampire who lurked in the shadows.

She needed to be ready for whatever was coming next. She needed to be ready to give them all what they deserved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I've now officially worked the condo from Another Minute into way too many stories. Sorry, y'all. I'll do better to restrain myself in the future. I should probably ban myself from using the beach and Pike, too. ;)
> 
> This was not actually inspired by Summertime Sadness, but the lyric fit so well, I had to use it for the title. (h/t to Mylie for showing interest in this story, which made me think of the relevance of that song because it's one of her favorites for B/A.)


End file.
